Institutional laundry settings, such as hotels, hospitals, or other commercial laundry establishments, may include tens or hundreds of clothes dryers. In such settings, operators typically set the dryer temperature to medium or high, and select the drying time to ensure that the textiles in the dryer will be completely dry when the cycle is completed. As a result, there is a high frequency of overdrying the textiles. Overdrying may result in premature textile degradation and/or damage, excess energy consumption, and an associated increase in energy costs.
Typical commercial clothes dryers do not have settings or dials to specifically address different fabric types: cotton, polyester, poly-cotton blends, nylon, delicates, etc. Also the operator normally does not have the option to select a predetermined desired level of dryness, such as damp, almost dry, dry, or very dry.
The drying conditions are also highly variable. For example, the dryers may range in sizes from 75 lb up to 500 lbs, with a broad range of BTU/hr, and extremely variable ambient air intake. Depending upon whether the ambient air intake is taken from inside the laundry room or from the outdoors, the ambient air intake can range from dry and very cold in the winter to hot and humid in the summer. The size and efficiency of the dryer, the lack of adjustable features in the dryer, the variability of the temperature and humidity of the air intake, the type and amount of textiles to be dried, the residual moisture content of the textile going to the dryer, and other factors may drastically affect the drying cycle and the dry endpoint.